Iconic ‘Last Sitting’ photographs taken by Bert Stern for Vogue among the lots
expected to sell for around £4000 a print

A series of rare prints, including images from Marilyn Monroe’s final photo-shoot, are expected to collectively raise nearly £50,000 at auction in Texas next week.

Prints of photos taken by Bert Stern for Vogue are available to bid on in the auction by Heritage Auctions Texas, which opens on March 10.Stern, who died in 2013, shot a series of photographs of Monroe (real name Norma Jeane Baker) for Vogue in June 1962, which were the last photos published of the actress and model before her sudden death that August. The photographs came to be known as The Last Sitting.

Also for auction are prints of rare photographs taken a month after Stern’s, by Monroe’s close friend George Barris, whom she met while working on her 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch.

The photos include images of Monroe looking playful on a Californian beach, and more sultry black and white images of her indoors. Barris's photographs were destined for a book he was working on about the 36-year-old icon, which was put on hold after her tragic death just three weeks later.

Experts say the six prints for auction could fetch up to £4,000 apiece.